Mounting USB NTFS drive in Windows 7 Guest

[MayhallAJ]

I cannot get my Windows 7 Guest OS to mount a USB NTFS drive. If you select Devices -> Usb Devices, it shows the mouse, keyboard and the Seagate Flex USB drive. All of them are greyed out. What do I need to do in order to get it to see the drive and mount it?

Thanks.

[Perryg]

OSE does not support USB devices. PUEL through 3.2.12 does.
The new VirtualBox 4 with extension Pack does though Open source has changed to all source and licensed items are in the ExtPack.

[MayhallAJ]

Ok. I have VirtualBox 4 (I had no idea what version to select in the registration, OSE? PUEL???). I have installed the ExtPack for Linux. What else needs to be done? I'm in the vboxusers group. I have created a filter and let it autoselect the drive.

[Perryg]

You might not want to set a filter for it. If the external drive is yanked from the host when the guest starts you can corrupt the drive.
Best practice is to unmount the drive from the host and then select it in the device -> usb section to do a proper start.

You need to make sure to reboot after all of these changes too. and of course be in the vboxuser group.

My take on external drives is to set them up as a shared folder if they are needed in the guest.